Natively Connect to Power BI XMLA Data in PHP

Drop the CData ODBC Driver for Power BI XMLA into your LAMP or WAMP stack to build Power BI XMLA-connected Web applications. This article shows how to use PHP's ODBC built-in functions to connect to Power BI XMLA data, execute queries, and output the results.

Configure a DSN

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

By default, use Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) to connect to Microsoft Power BI XMLA. Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) is Microsoft's multi-tenant, cloud-based directory and identity management service. It is user-based authentication that requires that you set AuthScheme to EntraID (formerly AzureAD).

For more information on other authentication schemes, refer to the Help documentation.

Establish a Connection

Open the connection to Power BI XMLA by calling the or methods. To close connections, use or .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PowerBIXMLA Source","user","password");

Connections opened with are closed when the script ends. Connections opened with the method are still open after the script ends. This enables other scripts to share that connection when they connect with the same credentials. By sharing connections among your scripts, you can save system resources, and queries execute faster.

$conn = odbc_pconnect("CData ODBC PowerBIXMLA Source","user","password");
...
odbc_close($conn); //persistent connection must be closed explicitly

Create Prepared Statements

Create prepared statements and parameterized queries with the function.

$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Country = ?");

Execute Queries

Execute prepared statements with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PowerBIXMLA Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Country = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Australia'));
 

Execute nonparameterized queries with .

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC PowerBIXMLA Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Country, Education FROM Customer WHERE Country = 'Australia'");
 

Process Results

Access a row in the result set as an array with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Power BI XMLA data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_exec($conn, "SELECT Country, Education FROM Customer WHERE Country = 'Australia'");
while($row = odbc_fetch_array($query)){
 echo $row["Country"] . "\n";
}

Display the result set in an HTML table with the function.

$conn = odbc_connect("CData ODBC Power BI XMLA data Source","user","password");
$query = odbc_prepare($conn, "SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE Country = ?");
$success = odbc_execute($query, array('Australia'));
if($success)
 odbc_result_all($query);

More Example Queries

You will find complete information on the driver's supported SQL in the help documentation. The code examples above are Power BI XMLA-specific adaptations of the PHP community documentation for all ODBC functions.